intel and others are about to hit the physical limits of silicon, so what's next

Graphene Valley doesn't have the same ring to it.

It has to be graphene but I have a buddy doing a PhD on some properties of graphene and he seems to believe we are pretty far off from having graphene based transistors. I know guys in a research group working on carbon nanotube transistors but I think the yield is still way too low to be cost effective.

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Also, there is a lessening market drive at the moment for more processing power. Outside of a few exceptions, you only really utilize the power of an upper mainstream processor with multitasking.

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And they have other ways to improve performance.

The real game is in low power chips, and intel knows it.

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Actual tit fat.

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[link=(gizmodo.com/this-brain-inspired-microchip-is-9-000-times-faster-tha-1569176926)]LINK[/link]

This looks like we still have a ways to go with silicon.

ETA: I didn't read the title completely, was up all night.

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ETA: I didn't read the title completely, was up all night.

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You also posted a bad link.

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intel and others are about to hit the physical limits of silicon, so what's next

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I think we always knew that we would reach this point some day. After all the theoretical limit for the transistor gate length would have been a single atom when it is all said and done. We have been heading towards this point (just like the end of oil) for some time now.

Having said let me ask some fundamental questions:

Does it really matter if we hit a physical wall in terms of how small transistors/chips can get? Everything that needs a processor that needs to be small (smartphones, smart watches etc.) are already small enough. The main driver once the physical limit is reached would be to make things more efficient to reduce power consumption and increase battery life. For devices that do need more power, processors can always be stacked for parallel processing - 2, 4, 8 whatever.

So in essence what I am saying is, does the end of Moore's law even have effect on normal day to day activities of a lay person? I am not so sure it does.

I guess what I am saying is for hardware such as desktops/servers that require large amounts of computing power, you can still use multiple processors to get the job done, since they don't have size limitations. For wearables, smart phones, tablets etc. on which you want to watch 4K videos at 500-600 ppi or whatever, I'm sure processors at that time will be able to handle that. Beyond that, at which point the human eyes can't tell the difference, what is the point of increasing specs for specs change?

The closest analogy I can come up with is this: The world is running out of oil and gas is at a premium and everyone's focus is to maximize fuel economy barring a few specialized vehicles for certain use cases. if the max speed you can go on the freeway is limited to 65 mph at the time, what is the point of building a car with 400 bhp with a top speed to 155 mph in those circumstances? As we hit the Moore's law wall, I see the same with semiconductors - existing silicon tech will be good enough for most mobile consumer applications with a focus on efficiency and battery life, while the heavy lifting will be done by desktops and mainframes (think cloud server - thin client).